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CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) ― Sarah Palin has endorsed Wyoming gubernatorial candidate Rita Meyer in the Republican primary.

In a Facebook posting Thursday, the former vice presidential candidate said "Meyer is ready to put her years of valuable public service to good use."

Meyer was elected Wyoming state auditor in 1996. She is seeking to replace Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal and faces four other candidates in the Aug. 17 primary.

In her endorsement, Palin said Meyer has a "unique blend of steel magnolia and mama grizzly."

For several days now, Senate Republicans have ridiculed their Democratic counterparts for prioritizing campaign finance legislation over a bill that would benefit small businesses, arguing that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was putting electoral advantages over jobs for everyday people.

On Tuesday, the DISCLOSE Act failed to get the needed votes for cloture, in the process providing the Senate the time needed to move on to other business. But when leadership brought a revised version of the small business bill to the floor on Thursday morning, they were met with united Republican opposition.

Despite complaining about the delay in consideration, Republicans filibustered the measure by a vote of 58 (in favor of cloture) to 42 (against). GOP leadership argued that it wasn't against the aims of the bill per se. They objected mainly to Reid's refusal to allow consideration of amendments to the legislation.

"It's not going to die," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spokesman Don Stewart, who noted that another vote could be held as early as today. "We just want to have amendments considered. They made a start, allowing three -- so we're making progress."

But as the GOP noted when chastising the consideration of DISCLOSE, the window for considering legislation is close to closing. As it stands now, Democrats are set to put energy legislation on the legislative calendar Friday and consider the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court next week. After that, they will head out of town for August recess. Allowing a lengthy amendment process could derail the remainder of what the party was hoping to consider.

The other major tenet of GOP criticism is that that the bill, which has been under consideration since late June, has moved far away from its original conception. Speaking on the floor, McConnell bemoaned the fact that "over a billion dollars in agriculture spending" has been added to the text. That said, there are fairly substantive bipartisan components to the legislation, which would eliminate capital gains taxes for investment in small firms, create a Small Business Lending Fund to underwrite loan through community banks and create a credit initiative for small business to help meet state budget shortfalls. Reid, moreover, has offered the chance to consider several GOP amendments already, and could well open the window for more.

The drama, which seems likely to extend throughout the day, is not only a reflection of just how ground-down the procedural elements of the Senate have become. It also shows how difficult it has been for Democrats to push forward on economic recovery -- which, in concept, has bipartisan support but always seems to come up a bit short when it comes to a roll call.

"Eighty-one percent of the jobs lost in America are from small business," said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). "So when the other side complains and complains and just flaps and flaps all day long about it's a jobless recovery, we put a bill on the floor to creates jobs for small business and they say no... They can color it, paint it any way they want, that's what it was."

Driver from www.huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON — House Republicans who have spent months demanding spending cuts blanched Wednesday at their first opportunity to actually make them, instead joining Democrats in treating a bill to pay for veterans programs in 2011 as politically sacrosanct in an election year.

The veterans measure is the first of a dozen spending bills for the upcoming 2011 budget year to come up for a vote. Democrats, meanwhile, were doing some ducking and weaving of their own to avoid time-consuming floor debates and politically difficult votes on other measures.

It's of little surprise that Democrats picked the Veterans Affairs bill as the first in the appropriations pile to bring to a vote. It passed by a 411-6 vote.

Only a handful of others are likely to get as far before the November election, even though all 12 are supposed to pass both the House and Senate and be signed by the president before Oct. 1. Last year at this time, the House had passed all 12 bills.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, offered the only amendments to cut the veterans bill but withdrew them as soon as Democrats started making political hay out of them.

Boehner wanted to cut the Veterans Affairs Department's rapidly growing policy office as well as its congressional lobbying operation and skim $45 million from the VA's $3.3 billion request for computer systems, which the agency itself admits was too high.

Still, Democrats howled.

"I couldn't believe it. You're coming into an election and you're taking money away from veterans," said Veterans Committee Chairman Bob Filner, D-Calif. "I guess that's their definition of supporting the troops."

A spokesman for Boehner said the GOP leader withdrew the amendments so that other Republicans could have a chance to offer theirs. But Boehner only did so after Democrats made it plain they were eager to award him votes and go on the attack.

Veterans programs are hardly hurting. The VA's so-called discretionary budget – the portion adopted by Congress each year – has risen 70 percent over the last five years and would receive a 7 percent boost for next year. Lawmakers say such increases are required by the large number of wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Republicans instead offered various ideas to increase veterans spending, including proposals for renewable energy projects at VA hospitals, health care for women veterans, and a paralympics sports program for disabled veterans.

By contrast, Republicans had lots of ideas for cutting transportation and housing programs in anticipation of a floor debate on Thursday, including cuts to Amtrak, the Washington-area Metro system, and across-the-board cuts to agencies.

"Wait until tomorrow," Boehner said.

Republicans also complained about a $701 million border measure that passed shortly afterwards. They argued that $500 million for 1,200 additional border patrol agents and for other steps to try to control the U.S.-Mexico border wasn't paid for with cuts to other programs.

Still, Republicans didn't force a roll call vote that would have put GOP lawmakers on record against the measure. It instead passed by voice vote, along with a $129 million measure to speed processing of patent applications.

The underlying $77 billion veterans measure is the easiest for Congress to pass each year because of the popularity of the programs and the high regard that the public holds for the military. This year's bill includes money to reduce a backlog in processing health claims, additional funding for community health centers and big increases to treat conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and traumatic brain injury.

On the other side of the Capitol, the notoriously balky Senate has made it plain it doesn't have much time to burn on routine spending bills. As a result, House Democratic leaders appear to have little enthusiasm for taking difficult votes and taking weeks of debate to pass bills that the Senate doesn't have time for.

The Senate Appropriations panel has approved half the bills, but it doesn't appear that the full chamber will debate any until mid-September at the earliest.

"We're trying to move some of them and see what the Senate does," said House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis. "The Senate seems to be moving on a different track than we are, but at least they're moving."

The once-bipartisan House committee have become bitterly polarized as Republicans have sought to force Democrats to cast politically difficult votes.

For example, Obey postponed debate and action on the bill to pay for homeland security programs after Republicans signaled they would offer amendments to block the Obama administration's attempts to nullify Arizona's controversial immigration law. A federal judge on Wednesday put the most significant portions of the Arizona law on hold.

Driver from www.huffingtonpost.com

The National Organization for Women is asking whether President Barack Obama's apparent reluctance to nominate Elizabeth Warren to head a new consumer agency is due to sexism, according to an email the group sent supporters Tuesday.

The noted consumer advocate, Wall Street bailout watchdog and Harvard Law professor is one of three candidates the White House has identified as leading contenders to head the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The agency, conceived by Warren in a 2007 article, was created as part of the financial reform bill Obama last week signed into law.

Bank lobbies fought to kill the agency while it was under consideration in Congress, and have expressed concern with a Warren nomination. The agency will regulate consumer credit products like mortgages and credit cards and some fear she could be too aggressive in protecting consumers from dubious lending practices, cutting off key sources of profitability for banks.

But while Obama administration officials, liberal Democrats and some Republicans are in near-universal agreement that Warren is well-qualified to run the agency, Obama, though praising Warren last week, has thus far declined to nominate her for the Senate-confirmed role. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has expressed opposition to her nomination, according to a source with knowledge of Geithner's views, the Huffington Post reported July 15. Treasury Department and White House officials, while effusive in their praise of Warren, have not denied the report, despite repeated opportunities.

Now, the nation's leading women's organization alleges sexism may be at play.

"If confirmed, Warren would protect consumers from further economic meltdowns caused by shady loans and credit," NOW wrote in its e-mail to supporters. "She would also demand accountability and consumer-friendly practices from Wall Street banks. But she's not part of the old boys club, so NOW asks: Could sexism be at work in denying her this position?"

The group went on to say that it hopes Obama "doesn't listen" to his top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, because of what NOW considers to be his allegedly sexist views.

"[S]ome of the president's top financial advisors, like Larry Summers, have expressed biased and blatantly sexist views about women's abilities," NOW wrote. "In 2005, Summers said, concerning women's aptitude for science and math, 'It does appear that on many, many different human attributes -- overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability -- there is relatively clear evidence that ... there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population.' Essentially, he claimed that men are innately inclined to be better at math and science than women.

"Let's hope that Obama doesn't listen to Summers on this decision!" the group wrote in its e-mail.

In an interview last week with ABC News, Obama called Warren a "wonderful voice making a very simple point, which is, if you've got a set of rules and standards in place to make sure your toaster doesn't blow up in your face, you should have some rules and regulations to make sure your credit card or mortgage doesn't blow up in your face."

Obama said he has the "highest regard" for her, but that he has yet to make a decision regarding possible appointment.

"[B]ut here's my guarantee," Obama added. "Elizabeth is going to be working with me, working with Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, to help in thinking about how do we make this consumer agency as effective as possible looking out for consumers. She is going to be actively involved in that process."

One consumer advocate involved in the effort to get the financial reform bill through Congress speculated that the "guarantee" could simply be a guarantee to keep Warren involved in consumer protection without actually nominating her for the role. Something similar was promised June 16 by David Axelrod, one of Obama's top advisers.

"The President believes Elizabeth Warren is a champion for middle class families and consumers, and her work on consumer protection issues helped guide his original proposal and will continue to play an important role on this issue going forward," Amy Brundage, a White House spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement. "Though the President has not named someone to this post less than a week after signing the bill, Elizabeth Warren will continue to play a vital role regardless in ensuring the consumer agency is as effective as possible."

NOW's sexism charge is a far cry from May 10 and May of 2009, when NOW praised Obama for his separate nominations of women -- Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor -- to the Supreme Court.

The organization's accusation follows up a similar allegation from a member of Congress.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, wrote in a July 20 blog post on HuffPost that opposition to Warren may be due to sexism.

"The good old boy network of investors is uncomfortable around her," Speier wrote. "Is this because she is a woman in a male-dominated 'sport,' or is it that she's an advocate for middle-class families who sees nothing amusing about winning and losing with people's life savings?"

Charges of sexism in financial regulation aren't new.

In 2008, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank alleged sexism was partly at play when it came to the Wall Street bailout and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bair's role in the negotiations.

Bair allegedly "annoyed the Old Boys Club," Frank said, likening the situation to several regulators "up in the treehouse with a 'No Girls Allowed' sign," according to a Politico.

In 1998, critics allege that sexism also played a role when financial regulators in the Clinton administration -- led in part by Summers -- objected to a proposal regulating over-the-counter derivatives that was championed by Brooksley E. Born, then-chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. At the time the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission were all headed by men.

However, while financial regulation has traditionally been dominated by men, there are some women in important roles today. The FDIC and SEC are both currently headed by women -- one of whom was appointed by Obama -- and two of Obama's three picks to join the Fed's Board of Governors are women.

The Treasury Department, though, continues to be led by mostly men. Of the top 20 officials Treasury lists on its Web site, just five are women.

Men also lead the CFTC, the OCC and the Fed. Of the five current Fed governors, just one -- Elizabeth Duke -- is a woman.

READ the NOW e-mail:

Watchdog Not Lapdog Needed to Reform Wall Street, Tell Obama to Nominate Elizabeth Warren to Head Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

On July 23, President Obama signed into law a sweeping financial reform bill, which created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government agency that would closely monitor Wall Street practices concerning credit and loans. Such an agency was originally proposed by Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor and expert on bankruptcy and credit. Warren is the most qualified and most obvious choice for head of this bureau, but she's definitely not favored by Wall Street and its sympathizers in the government.

If confirmed, Warren would protect consumers from further economic meltdowns caused by shady loans and credit. She would also demand accountability and consumer-friendly practices from Wall Street banks. But she's not part of the old boys club, so NOW asks: Could sexism be at work in denying her this position?

Write President Obama today and tell him that the people of the United States want a head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who will promote the interests of consumers, not the interests of big banks. Tell him we want Elizabeth Warren!

Background:

In 2007, Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law professor, wrote an article in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas that proposed the creation of a government agency to protect consumers from duplicitous credit practices, much the same way that consumers are protected from faulty or dangerous products. Three years later, the government has taken Warren's advice and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, passed on July 23.

The bureau would have the power to oversee, analyze, and regulate credit and loans, including credit cards and mortgages. It would protect consumers from any abusive banking practices and would also be able to monitor Wall Street to prevent another economic meltdown. Overall, the purpose of the bureau is consumer protection, and it needs a head who will be on the side of everyday people, not the rich and superrich.

Elizabeth Warren is more than qualified to head this bureau. She is an expert on bankruptcy, a distinguished researcher and the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, which monitored the Wall Street bailouts. Her background, experience, and commitment to the welfare of consumers make her the most obvious choice for head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

However, those on Wall Street and government officials who support them do not want Warren to head the bureau, as they know that she would boldly stand up for consumers and crack down on the underhanded practices of big banks. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has voiced objections to Warren, and though he's since described her as "an enormously effective leader," he still has not said that he would recommend her nomination.

Some of the president's top financial advisors, like Larry Summers, have expressed biased and blatantly sexist views about women's abilities. In 2005, Summers said, concerning women's aptitude for science and math, "It does appear that on many, many different human attributes--overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability--there is relatively clear evidence that ...there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population." Essentially, he claimed that men are innately inclined to be better at math and science than women. Let's hope that Obama doesn't listen to Summers on this decision!

The consumers of the U.S. need a strong watchdog like Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not a Wall Street lapdog.

Hulk Hogan's former wife of two and a half decades, Linda Hogan, 50, is engaged to 21-year-old boyfriend Charlie Hill.

As Limelife points out -- in a post littered with the term "boy-toy" -- Charlie will be stepfather to Brooke Hogan, who is one year his elder. "Linda's hubby-to-be was [her son] Nick's friend before this whole relationship started. They started dating when Charlie was only 19," the blog writes. The news broke courtesy of The National Enquirer.

The two will reportedly wed next summer, aboard Linda's new yacht, named 'Alimoney' [sic].

Linda's divorce from her wrestler husband was finalized in 2009. While there's no word from the Hulkster on the couple's marriage plans, it's impossible to forget his comments to Rolling Stone last year: "You live half a mile from the 20,000-square-foot home you can't go to anymore, you're driving through downtown Clearwater [Florida] and see a 19-year-old boy driving your Escalade, and you know that a 19-year-old boy is sleeping in your bed, with your wife ... I totally understand O.J. I could have turned everything into a crime scene like O.J., cutting everybody's throat."

Brooke Hogan told E! satellite radio in 2008 that she was "totally freaked out" by her mother's new romance. "I personally don't like it at all or condone it, but she's my mom, so I have to show her support. I went to school with him. He was a grade under me. Me and Nick know him well."

Hulk Hogan's new leading lady, Jennifer McDaniel, is, according to some, a dead-ringer for his daughter Brooke. "Keeping the split classy, both Linda and the Hulk moved on quickly and dated wildly younger people, with Hulk getting engaged to a 36-year-old who, proving he has a type, is of course platinum blond," writes Babble. Hulk proposed to McDaniel in late 2009.

"My marriage to Linda was very toxic and very negative," Hulk told FOX News after his engagement. "Jennifer is just the opposite, she doesn't drink or get high on drugs. She doesn't watch anything negative like the news or TMZ. She doesn't read the newspaper. She always walks in the spirit of Christ, she never deviates. I can really see myself marrying this woman."

FOROS, Ukraine — Vladimir Putin says he met with the Russian spies who were expelled from the United States, joining them in singing an unofficial KGB anthem and promising them good jobs and a bright future back in their homeland.

Russia's prime minister said late Saturday he recently got together with the 10 sleeper agents, without saying when or where. The agents were deported from the U.S. earlier this month in a biggest spy scandal since the Cold War.

"We talked about life," Putin told reporters in Ukraine. "We sang 'What Motherland Begins With' and other songs of that character."

"What Motherland Begins With" is a song from the 1968 television series about Soviet spies in Nazi Germany. The song is widely known as an unofficial anthem of Russian intelligence officers.

Putin, a former KGB officer who in the early 1980s worked in communist East Germany as a low-level functionary, spoke about the uneasy lives the secret agents had in the U.S., where they were caught by the FBI in U.S. cities and suburbs where they had been living for more than a decade.

"They had a very difficult fate," Putin said, referring to the expelled spies who spent years of burrowing into American society. "They had to carry out a task to benefit their motherland's interests for many, many years without a diplomatic cover, risking themselves and those close to them."

The 10 agents were deported in exchange for three former intelligence officers and a think tank arms expert convicted and sentenced to long prison sentences in Russia. An 11th Russian spy escaped authorities in Cyprus and remains at large, and a 12th one, who had worked for Microsoft, was deported from the United States in mid-July.

U.S. authorities did not charge the agents with spying, and it is not clear whether they actually compromised any U.S. secrets. Some Russian analysts called their mission a failure that showed how inefficient Russian intelligence agencies are.

Putin, however, promised that Russia will take a good care of its spying sons and daughters.

"They will work, and I am sure they will have decent jobs," he said. "And I am sure they will have an interesting and bright life."

The biggest spy swap since the Soviet collapse did not complicate President Barack Obama's campaign to improve and broaden U.S. relations with Russia, and both Moscow and Washington sides expressed satisfaction with the resolution of the spy case.

WASHINGTON — A House investigative committee on Thursday charged New York Rep. Charles Rangel with multiple ethics violations, dealing a serious blow to the former Ways and Means chairman and complicating Democrats' election-year outlook.

The House ethics committee won't reveal the specific charges until next Thursday in a public meeting. However, sources familiar with the allegations, who were not authorized to discuss them publicly, said the charges against the 40-year Democrat were related to:

_Rangel's use of official stationery to raise money for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York.

_His use of four rent-subsidized apartment units in New York City. The city's rent stabilization program is supposed to apply to one's primary residence. One had been used as a campaign office, raising a separate question of whether the rent break was an improper gift.

_Rangel's failure to report income as required on his annual financial disclosure forms. The committee had investigated his failure to report income from the lawmaker's rental unit at the Punta Cana Yacht Club in the Dominican Republic. Rangel also belatedly disclosed hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment assets.

The charges by a four-member panel of the House ethics committee sends the case to a House trial. A separate panel of four Republicans and four Democrats will decide whether the violations can be proved by clear and convincing evidence.

Sanctions can range from a damaging committee report to censure by the House and even expulsion, a punishment reserved for only the most egregious violations.

The timing of the announcement ensures that a public airing of Rangel's ethical woes will stretch into the fall campaign, and Republicans are certain to make it an issue as they try to capture majority control of the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had once promised to "drain the swamp" of ethical misdeeds by lawmakers in arguing that Democrats should be in charge.

Rangel, who is tied for fourth in House seniority, told reporters that he believes the allegations have no substance and said, "I look forward to airing this thing."

"If you ask me how I feel about it, I feel extraordinarily good that my supporters over 40 years will be able to evaluate what they have come up with and I don't have any fear at all politically or personally what they come up with," he said.

In a written statement, Rangel said, "I am pleased that, at long last, sunshine will pierce the cloud of serious allegations that have been raised against me in the media."

Rangel was in negotiations to settle the case, said one person who was familiar with the talks but was not authorized to be quoted by name. The talks broke down when Rangel only agreed to accept some of the alleged violations, and that didn't satisfy the ethics committee, the person said.

His trial could begin around the time of his mid-September primary. While Rangel is a legend in New York's Harlem, elected 20 times, other Democrats are in close races and not looking forward to defending their party's ethical conduct.

Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said, "The action today would indicate that the independent, bipartisan ethics committee process is moving forward."

Republicans immediately seized on the case. House GOP leader John Boehner said the charges were "a sad reminder of Speaker Pelosi's most glaring broken promise: to drain the swamp in Washington."

Rangel led the tax-writing Ways and Means panel until he stepped aside last March after the ethics committee criticized him in a separate case – finding that he should have known corporate money was paying for his trips to two Caribbean conferences.

Rangel had hoped to regain his chairmanship, but the allegations make that virtually impossible this year.

He recently announced a bid for a 21st term, days before his 80th birthday. One of his Sept. 14 primary opponents is Adam Clayton Powell IV, son of the congressman whom Rangel defeated in 1970.

While the case will generate unfavorable headlines for Rangel, it may have little effect in his congressional district, where he has been a Harlem political leader for decades and is known by older constituents as a Korean War hero.

"He keeps ethics on Page 1 and Democrats, going into a tough election cycle, aren't eager to carry any liabilities beyond what they have," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College poll.

"But I think it has less to do – barring any major undoing of his legislative career – with his seat," Miringoff said.

___

AP) - When a Democratic National Committee member asked for guidance on whom to support in the Democratic Senate primary, some come quickly -- from billionaire Jeff Greene.

DNC member Jon Ausman of Tallahassee sent out a blast e-mail June 13 asking people to take a survey on the Senate race saying it "will guide me in making my endorsement choice." He says he sent the e-mail June 11, though an Associated Press reporter on the list received it June 13.

The next day, Greene, who's running against Rep. Kendrick Meek for the Democratic nomination, wrote Ausman a $4,000 check for political consultation and strategy.

Six days later, Ausman announced his endorsement in another e-mail: Greene.

He signed the endorsement e-mail as a DNC member but didn't mention that he was being paid by Greene. He says he provided 35,000 e-mail addresses in exchange for the money.

Ausman said Wednesday that he had already planned to support Greene before being paid by him and that he plans to make it clear in the future that he is a paid consultant.

"Frankly I liked Greene from the word get go," said Ausman, who received national attention in 2008 for challenging the DNC's decision to strip Florida of its delegates as punishment for holding an early presidential primary.

Ausman said he was also one of the few people who donated to the Greene campaign, writing a check below $200, the amount at which Greene must list donors.

"God bless him," Ausman said. "His check to me was bigger than the one I sent him."

Greene has spent about $6 million of his own money on the campaign while accepting $3,036 in donations.

"The endorsement of Ausman was very welcome but we also wanted to tap into his experience," said Luis Vizcaino, a Greene spokesman.

At a rare congressional hearing Tuesday morning about how to spend less -- not more -- on defense, panelists raised a question that has barely ever been asked on Capitol Hill.

Namely: What lesson have we learned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is it that we should prepare for similar conflicts in the future, or that we should avoid them like the plague?

Over the past nine years, it's gradually become accepted that our military's duties include not just deterrence and conventional warfare but counterinsurgency, nation-building, counterterrorism and propping up fragile governments.

A recent Congressional Research Service report determined that the more than $1 trillion that's been spent on Afghanistan and Iraq make the "war on terror" the second most expensive U.S. military action, in constant dollars, after World War II.

So when it comes to making substantial cuts in the country's enormously expanded military budget, said Gordon Adams, a professor of international relations at American University, "the key is going to be in mission discipline."

"We are at a point in American history where a serious, baseline discussion of strategy and mission is essential," Adams told a House oversight subcommittee for national security and foreign affairs.

Congress needs to do a "hard scrub" when it comes to what missions it considers appropriate for the armed forces going forward, he said. "Which ones are most important to the security of the U.S.?" Is the chief takeaway from Afghanistan and Iraq "that our national security is engaged every time there is a terrorist attack, every time there is a insurgency," and so on?

Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, noted that defense spending is now at levels significantly above the peaks of the Cold War, and is up 96 percent in constant dollars since 1998.

"We need to look at this budget with new eyes," he said.

"The fabulous cost, slow progress, and uncertain outcome of recent efforts at regime change, armed nation-building, and large-scale counter-insurgency make them a poor strategic choice, when other approaches are available for fighting terrorism and countering proliferation," Connetta said in his written testimony.

Even among supporters of the wars, "few seem eager to repeat the exercise elsewhere in the future," he wrote. "Can we draw a broader lesson from this?"

Benjamin Friedman, a research fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, insisted that "a more restrained defense strategy would not only save money, it would improve our national security."

"Defining security so broadly is actually counterproductive," he said.

The call for a broader debate was popular up on the dais -- at least on the Democratic side.

"We need a thoughtful, non-rancorous discussion about the appropriate mission," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

Frank has been actively promoting ideas to cut the defense budget. In April, he put together a group of scholars to look specifically for defense cuts, unlike President Obama's deficit-reduction commission, which appears to be focusing elsewhere. The group issued its report last month, outlining nearly $1 trillion in defense budget cuts over the next 10 years.

"What should we be doing? What policy should we be setting? We have not had that conversation," Frank said Tuesday.

"I don't know that we really have a defense budget," said Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) who chaired the hearing. "It seems to me that we just spend whatever we want to spend."

Tierney said he hopes there will not be another war like Afghanistan or Iraq in the nation's future. "What's our interest there? I don't think we ask that question enough," he said.

Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) welcomed the idea of a serious examination of the armed forces' structure and mission. "That's a debate Congress has not yet had," he said.

Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) called for a review of the "amazing" amount of inherently governmental functions and responsibilities that have been outsourced to contractors. "These contractors are cleaning up and they're making pretty hefty profits, and that's all at the expense of the American taxpayer," he said.

Republican members of the subcommittee did not share the Democrats' concerns about mission and money.

"Defense is where we're supposed to spend tax dollars," said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who indicated his support for reductions in "everything else."

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) warned: "We can be penny wise and security foolish."

Driver from: www.huffingtonpost.com

In this video, WKRG News 5 investigates the toxicity levels of local public beaches that have been populated with people swimming and children playing in the water in Alabama. Their search ends with some explosive results.

WKRG teams up with Bob Naman, an analytical chemist with almost 30 years in the field. Naman tested WKRG's various samples for petroleum, and said he expected to find no more than 5 parts per million (ppm). Instead, Naman finds results that far exceed his expectations: 16 ppm from waters at Katrina Key, and 29 ppm at Orange Beach.

The most shocking results came from a sample of water collected near a boom at Dauphin Island Marina. When Naman combined the sample with an organic solvent that separates the oil from the water, which he did for all the other samples as well, it exploded in his lab, breaking the container and destroying the sample in the process. Naman thinks the reaction was caused by the presence of methane gas or Corexit, the dispersant that BP has been using in the Gulf.

Driver from: www.huffingtonpost.com